Guess what researchers went looking for in Lubbock loos?

I know this sounds crazy, but to ascertain whether people use cocaine one cannot rely on surveys alone.

You can learn a lot from waste. (Wikimedia)

After all, cocaine users are unlikely to answer yes to the question, “Do you use cocaine?”

So researchers need to be more creative. Like the good people at Texas Tech University, who realized that a good place to go looking for evidence of cocaine was in waste.

Forensic researchers at Texas Tech (ok, a student and a prof) went out to the Lubbock Water Reclamation Plant twice a week to sample the, uhh, effluent for five months. They then analyzed it — please don’t giggle — with a gas chromatographer.

In their analysis the scientists looked for a stable cocaine metabolite, benzoylecgonine, in the wastewater. They estimate that daily consumption of cocaine in the region was 1.1 kilograms, or about $100,000 worth.

In the study (see abstract), published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, they also conclude that the people of Lubbock use more coke on weekends than weekdays. Shocker, I know, but the poo doesn’t lie.